I Was Not Prepared for the Grossness!

As a kid, I had a miniature pinscher named Katy.  She was very sweet and protective of her family.  Basically, that means she barked at and attacked the shoelaces of anyone besides her family members.  I have very fond memories of Katy, but those memories don't include any grossness.  

Jazzy has introduced me to some gross dog things I never even knew about before owning a dog.  Take whipworms, for example.  I had heard of heartworms and ringworms, but not whipworms.  A few weeks ago, I came home from work and thought to myself, "My house smells like a toilet."  I wandered around and found a liquidy pile of poop in the hallway.  And boy, was it smelly!  Jazzy has never had an accident in the house.  We were very lucky to find that she was potty trained when we brought her home.  So I knew something had to be wrong, even though she acted like she felt fine.  I figured that she had just eaten something that upset her stomach.  

The next day we put her in the laundry room just in case there was another accident.  It would be far easier to clean poop off of our tiled laundry room floor than the carpet in our hallway.  I came home and found another gross pile of poo waiting for me.  So I called the vet and asked what they thought I should do.  They told me to bring in a poop sample and they would test it. Luckily, I had thought to save the poop from the laundry room and brought it to the vet's office for testing.  

The vet called us the next day and told us Jazzy had whipworms.  I guess whipworms are found in the soil.  So if a dog walks around in some whipworm-contaminated soil and then licks their paw, they can get whipworms.  They gave us some medicine to get rid of them and told us she needed to be taking Interceptor instead of Heartgard.  Apparently Heartgard doesn't protect dogs against whipworms.  I was a bit angry that they didn't tell us to use Interceptor from the start!  They were the ones who told us to use Heartgard.  But it doesn't do any good to throw a fit and the vet's office was kind enough to switch out the Heartgard medication we had with Interceptor.  

Jazzy hasn't had any more accidents since then and we bring in another sample in a week to make sure she is clear of whipworms.  Who knew whipworms even existed? 

Another gross moment Jazzy was kind enough to share with me was the time she found a dead mouse on one of our walks.  When we go on our walks, I like to look around at how people have landscaped and the colors they have painted their house so I don't always pay attention to what Jazzy is doing. On this particular walk, I looked down at Jazzy and thought I saw a leaf stuck in her little beard.  I asked Jazzy if she would like for me to get that leaf out of her beard and bent down to get it.  Upon doing so, I noticed it was not a leaf, but a dried up mouse tail instead.  And there was a dried up mouse body attached to the tail in her mouth!  GROSS!  

I told Jazzy it was dirty and yucky and that she needed to spit it out.  She did not listen.  So I shook her head a little hoping that would make her drop it, but that didn't work either.  I tried to pry her little jaw open next, but she wasn't planning on letting go any time soon.  Eventually I had to touch the dead mouse with my fingers and yank it out of her mouth.  Jazzy gave me a face like this after I took her prized possession away from her:

After we got home, I announced to Adam that Jazzy would need to have her teeth brushed while I scrubbed a layer of skin off my hand.  (Yes, Adam brushes Jazzy's teeth with peanut butter flavored toothpaste.)  Adam asked me why I didn't just use one of Jazzy's poop bags as a glove before touching the dead mouse.  He's full of good ideas.

I'm sure Jazzy will share many more gross moments with me.  They are a small price to pay for having such sweet dog in my life.